Friday 16 July 2010

Holiday!

I'm going to Portugal on Sunday! So excited, I can't wait. Work is pretty good at the moment, but I'm still looking forward to having a break. Hopefully will give me a chance to chill out slightly, I've been getting more emotional and bleh again recently. And it will be good to have some time away with the boyfriend! And some sunshine would be nice too...

On a completely unrelated note, I've been wanting to write a post about Raoul Moat and the way people have reacted to the whole thing. My thoughts are mostly summarised in this Facebook post (although not entirely as the vast majority of my Facebook friends have no idea I have depression and didn't want to express how it effects me personally):

Claire is sick of stupid people claiming that Raoul Moat should have just got over his severe psychiatric problems, or that it was all his own fault for not turning up to appointments. What he did was unforgivable, but he was severely let down. The man was simply not capable of looking after his own affairs, he needed someone... to intervene. Why did nobody do anything to find out why he wasn't turning up to appointments?

Tom: i don't think the nhs like to instil a dependency on their services and instead try to make the person in control of their own recovery.

Claire: And that clearly works so well >.>

Every time we have one of these random shootings, people seem so surprised when it turns out the person involved had mental health problems. It's not a surprise, healthy people do not just decide to go and shoot a bunch of people in cold blood. And it's going to keep happening until we start taking mental health seriously instead of telling people to just cheer up, get over it, whatever.


While I personally am not mentally unstable enough to snap and do something like that, I can understand the feeling of not being able to take control of your own affairs. I had counselling a while ago after a serious car crash, and even then I was kind of all over the place and missed appointments and things. It's easy to do. Now, I've had a phone number for a counsellor for three weeks and am yet to do anything with it because I'm scared. Asking for help is hard. We need to do more to make people feel able to open up and talk about their problems, without feeling like it's a sign of weakness.

And I know this is a bit hypocritical as the vast majority of my friends and family have no idea about my depression, but I am slowly getting better at talking openly about it. It's scary and difficult, but I am starting to share more. It's just an awkward thing to drop into casual conversation...

So on that happy note, I'm off to Portugal! Will be back next Sunday.

2 comments:

  1. Hey there Claire! I hope you had a wonderful time in Portugal! I enjoy the honesty of your blogs. Check out mine http://venusflytrapp.blogspot.com
    love to have you become follower!

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  2. Thank you, always nice to get some positive feedback on my blog! :)

    ReplyDelete